Time Warping

In case you didn't notice, the blog was a little quiet last week. I spent a brief vacation in Williamsburg, VA.

I learned several important things:

1. We really screwed this country up--granted, things were simpler back then, but if those guys that fought and died for this country came back and saw how we have twisted their constitution . . . well, I don't want to be around when they start raising their muskets.

2. A seven-year-old is going to be BORED no matter what the display.

3. There weren't many PSU fans in Williamsburg. I saw an Illinois shirt and a Michigan jacket. There was a bus marked Wisconsin, but I didn't see any badger sportswear.

And now I'm back. As I sort through the current articles, I scratch my head. Did I even leave? Haven't I missed anything?

In my Sunday edition of the Altoona Mirror, a local Pitt homer writes in to the editor with a half-page letter demanding to know why the Pitt-PSU football series can't be renewed. As if that dead panther hasn't been beaten to death enough already.

According to Joe Mandak of the AP, attorney's for a newspaper (the Harrisburg Patriot no less) want the courts to force PSU to reveal Paterno's salary.

The Commonwealth Court heard arguments on whether the State Employees' Retirement System board was right to rule last year that Paterno's salary and those of three other top Penn State University officials are public record.

An attorney for Penn State told the court that the case is really about The Patriot-News of Harrisburg's tabloid-like curiosity about how much Paterno makes.

So how much does JayPa make?

Let's see, renewing the Pitt series, guessing JoePa's salary . . . is there any other age-old questions to rehash?

How about the college football playoffs? Well, maybe not in so many words, but the issue was raised in the discussion of adding a 12th game to the schedule, according to Bob Smizik of the Post-Gazette.

The holier-than-thou presidents of the NCAA -- the ones who talk, and only talk, a spectacular academic game -- are at it again. Revenues are not meeting expenses so they did what they always do:

More games for the so-called student-athletes -- who are little more than unpaid employees of the athletic department -- and more ticket purchases for the boosters.

This 12th game that the presidents allowed will result in 58 more games being played. Yet the same presidents steadfastly refuse to budge for academic reasons on a national playoff, although an eight-team format would result in an additional seven games.

Now granted, the math is a little fuzzy. Those 58 games are played by 116 teams--assuming every Div. IA school opts to play a 12th game. A play-off would mean an additional seven games, but the winning team might have to play 3 more games rather than just one extra game. And, it doesn't solve the logistical problem of selecting only 8 teams to begin with, knowing that the ninth team left out may be just as good or better than most of the other 8. But dear God, do we have to rehash this again?